1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pipette for bio-cell manipulation and, more particularly, to a smart pipette for bio-cell manipulation which can freely change orientation of a bio-cell subject to the manipulation (“Subject Cell”) by using mechanical friction and applying instantaneous impact when penetrating the Subject Cell while receiving real-time feedback of force/torque information of the Subject Cell. Thus, according to the present invention, the Subject Cell may be effectively manipulated with minimum distortion, rupture or other deformation.
Further, the present invention relates to a bio-cell manipulation method and system using a smart pipette and, more particularly, to a bio-cell manipulation method and system using a smart pipette, through which a bio-cell may be manipulated upon the application of the force/torque information generated during the cell manipulation to the smart pipette control.
2. Prior Art
The biotechnology through which animal or human body is studied attracts more and more interests these days and currently a lot of research works are ongoing to prevent and cure human disease by discovering the DNA structure of a human body. Recently, a Korean research team discovered first in the world that certain special gene which does not appear in a normal stomach cell becomes active in a stomach cancer cell and protects cancer cell against anticancer medicine.
As a part of the modern science, the biotechnology develops together with nano-technology and information technology, etc., rather than growing independently of other technology field. For example, ultra-small device for disease treatment has been developed through combination of bio-technology, nano-technology and information technology. Accordingly, metabolism trouble is checked by an ultra-small device's moving through blood vessels of a human body and if any problem is discovered, the relevant image is transmitted to an external health diagnosis system or disease treatment system. Further, through communications with the external system, the relevant pathogen may be eliminated directly by the device.
Notwithstanding the recent advance and development in the biotechnology and its combination with various other technology fields, in certain manipulation system such as the ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) used for the conventional IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), a person must manually operate the manipulator relying exclusively on the visual information obtained from a microscope. In such system, the success rate of the operation largely depends on the skill of the person who manipulates the system and thus for adequate and precise manipulation of the system, the relevant person must receive thorough manipulation training for a substantial time period.
Thus, also in the above-mentioned bio field where the manual manipulation is used, the minute manipulation technology using the micro system needs to be developed and, further, stable and minute bio-cell manipulation method and system is required in which the manipulation may be automated and the manipulating person's proficiency does not make too much difference.
Further, bio-cells can easily be destroyed because bio-cells are not uniform in their shape and are subject to deformation at the time of manipulation. When a live cell is manipulated in liquid, due to the circulation caused by the pipette manipulation, the manipulation environment may be very unstable and thus very high skill is required for manual manipulation of a bio-cell in such case.
Given the foregoing, it is necessary to develop a bio-cell manipulation system and method through which the cell manipulation does not need to be carried out always by a very highly skilled person and through which the cell manipulation may be carried out with stability according to certain settings that can be varied depending on different circumstances.